Homeowner who shot DEAD army veteran for relieving himself near his home may walk free under
controversial property protection laws
Tragic: Paul Franklin Dart, pictured right with friends, was trying to calm down the gunman when he was shot in the head.
A married army veteran was shot dead in front of his wife and stepson during an annual family rafting trip on Saturday after a relative urinated on the river bank, enraging the landowner.
James Robert Crocker, 59, confronted the group of family and friends with a 9 mm handgun after they stopped for a quick break at a gravel bar in Meramex, and one of the revelers walked into the woods to relieve himself.
After a brief altercation over whether the gravel bar was private or public property, Crocker shot Paul Franklin Dart, 48, in the head from just a few feet away, as his wife Loretta and her son Josh Kling, 24, watched in horror.
Dart, a union carpenter from Robertsville, died in an ambulance on the way to hospital less than five hours after setting off on the annual trip the group had organized every summer for the past five years.
'I watched him be shot in the face and fall down,' Loretta Dart sobbed in a telephone interview with The St. Louis Dispatch on Monday. 'I watched my husband bleed to death. He was a wonderful man. He didn't deserve this.'
Crocker told police the shooting happened after he accused the group of trespassing on his land and they claimed the gravel bar was public property, leading to a dispute. The laws in Missouri are extremely vague about property rights along streams and rivers and who can legally access them.
- See more at:
http://www.coloradonewsday.com/national/8017-james-robert-crocker-charged-army-veteran-is-shot-dead-in-front-of-family-after-cousin-enrages-landowner-by-urinating-on-gravel-bar-during-annual-floating-trip.html#sthash.qOJtmtXR.dpuf
= new reply since forum marked as read
well yes it does have to do with people shooting people...........
